“The ACC and SEC have created a de facto partnership as the lone power conferences to maintain an eight-game scheduling model entering the College Football Playoff.”

This clearly means the ACC and SEC are forming an alliance. With the Pac 12 and Big 10 tied together, who is left out? Yes it is the Big 12. The Big 12 will be the conference that dies… Oh sorry I had a circa 2012 flashback, where every conference partnership had supposedly far reaching effects across college athletics. Some of the scenarios presented back then were pure comedy.

Nothing like that here, but there is significance to this. The Big 10/ACC basketball challenge has been an immensely popular pre-conference basketball event for years. Something like this would be an attention grabber. It’s a tall order for the ACC to form an annual alliance with the SEC, but when you win it can be highly rewarding. ACC teams have knocked off SEC opponents like LSU, Georgia, Florida and Auburn in recent years. That has helped the ACC gain some football traction the last 2 years.

In addition, I can certainly see this being inventory for future SEC and potential ACC Network, and being promoted by ESPN across their family of networks.

We’ll have to see how this develops, but I think it’s a good move for both conferences.